Premier League referee chief asks clubs for more patience with VAR handling

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By Martin Graham | 17th May 2023

The chief of Premier League referees, Howard Webb, has asked for patience from the clubs as the referees continue to improve on how they use the Video Assistant Refereeing (VAR) systems.

There have been multiple instances of teams being short-changed due to wrong VAR calls this season. One of those affected is Arsenal, who will hold the belief that the call that went against them could be the difference between their current predicament and a title win which they were very close to until a few weeks ago.

Webb had to reach out to the club to discuss the decision and apologise for the error, but despite his earlier claims that there will be less errors, they have continued to happen.

Webb had to defend his referees on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football, saying that the technology is not foolproof because it is being manned by humans. He also asked clubs to be more patient with the league referees as they continue to master the technology and reduce the margin of errors in their calls.

“We made a commitment to have a lot of dialogue with clubs and I’ve had a lot of open conversations and acknowledged to them some incidents, most [conversations] privately and a few publicly,” Webb said. “We will acknowledge those [mistakes] publicly on occasion. We want people to understand how good our officials are and to see the process and rationale.”

Gary Neville asked further questions on what the referee organisation has planned around the possibility of giving the right calls after reviewing controversial VAR calls in some games. Webb would respond that their hands are tied as decisions must happen in-game.

“We can’t play it live in game because we can’t by the laws of the game. But there is nothing to stop us doing like we are tonight and doing it later,” Webb said. “We’ve tried to show a range of situations tonight and going forward we’re looking to do more of the same.”

Jamie Carragher then brought up the Arsenal VAR incident that cost them three points against Brentford due to the VAR operator forgetting to place the offside lines while checking Ivan Toney’s equaliser for the Bees in the game.

Carragher then asked about the process of choosing who gets to operate the technology every match and Webb responded, saying: “We look at people in training and some of our best referees don’t do VAR very often as there isn’t always transferable skills.

“The ones who are the best at it get the most appointments and experience comes into it as well.

“We look at how well they perform that job, their error rate and we want to make sure the right people are on the right games.” Webb then added: “We are asking the VAR to be as efficient as they can be and we’re hoping that by playing these [audios] out that you see the process.

“We can’t sacrifice accuracy for speed. What we want to do is have all the information we can to get to the right decision. Don’t forget we are dealing with human beings with VAR, we are still learning.”